The advancement of communication technologies and services have afforded users with the ability and convenience of remaining in continual contact via a variety of mechanisms (e.g., cellular phone, pager, voice-mail, etc.). Consequently, a typical user is associated with numerous contact addresses (e.g., numbers). This typical user, for example, has a work telephone number, a home telephone number, a pager number, a cellular phone number, a facsimile number, etc. Although greater flexibility is provided through these communication mechanisms, inefficiencies arise with respect to their management and use. In recognition of this, telecommunication service providers have developed a Find-Me/Follow-Me service that routes a call to a particular device based on a subscriber specified list of phone numbers in an attempt to reach the subscriber. The list constitutes a subscriber profile and enumerates the order of telephone numbers in which the network attempts to contact the subscriber. That is, the network forwards an incoming call to a location that is pre-designated by the subscriber. Such a service is particularly useful for individuals who need to be contacted immediately; for example, emergency personnel. Many callers are reluctant to leave voice mail messages, believing that their calls are of little import, resulting effectively in a lost call to the called party. Therefore, users who seek to not lose such calls are required to utilize a search type service such as Find-Me/Follow-Me.
The conventional Find-Me/Follow-Me service, which employs a static subscriber profile, has a number of drawbacks. Although the subscriber profile typically designates telephone numbers in conjunction with a schedule, this schedule is fixed, and thus, lacks the flexibility to adapt to any irregularities in scheduling. For example, the network may “know” that the subscriber is typically at work from 9:00AM to 5:00PM, and hence, to attempt to reach the subscriber at the work telephone number during these hours, the schedule is, at best, a rough estimation. The network may need to make numerous attempts prior to contacting the subscriber, resulting in delay in call processing. Furthermore, the many attempts may unnecessarily consume precious network resources. To avoid these wastes (and accompanying costs), the subscriber is required to manually instruct the network with regard to schedule and telephone numbers. However, this approach imposes a great burden on the subscriber to continually make manual modifications to the subscriber profile.
Therefore, there is a need for an approach for providing a search type service (e.g., Find-Me/Follow-Me) with a mechanism for automatically updating a subscriber profile.